by Rumaan Alam
She went back to the den and switched on the television. The screen was blue. Rose opened the cabinet beneath it and found the PlayStation, the dozens of plastic boxes holding the various games, and dozens of DVDs. They didn’t have a player at their house, but there was one in the classroom, and she was not stupid. She decided on Friends; they had the whole box set. It was the episode where Ross fantasized about Princess Leia.
The sound of the television made her feel so much better. She turned the volume loud to keep her company as she ransacked. Band-Aids, Advil, a package of batteries. These were treasure but meant as proof. There was a blue-walled bedroom, sparsely filled; clearly its teenage inhabitant had left home. This, Rose thought, this could be Archie’s. She wouldn’t mind the guest room, its staid oval rug, its fussy, frilly curtains. Home was just where you were, in the end. It was just the place where you found yourself.
She didn’t know that her mother was, at that moment, sitting in quiet in the empty, bird-smelling egg shack. When Amanda saw her son again, it would take her some time to find her voice. A shock. Then, later, she’d see her daughter again, and still be unable to speak. She’d just shiver.
Rose knew the way back—over that rise, then down it, carefully, correcting for gravity—past this familiar tree and that familiar tree and the little clearing with its sacred beam of light. She’d seen once, on the internet, that trees knew not to grow into one another, held themselves at some remove from their neighbors. Trees knew to occupy only their given patch of earth and sky. Trees were generous and careful, and maybe that would be their salvation.
She’d go back. She’d probably been missed, already, and felt a little guilty over not leaving a note. But she’d show them her bag, the things she’d found, tell them about the house in the woods with the DVD player and the three nice bedrooms and the camping supplies in the basement and the pantry lined with cans. She was only a girl, but the world still held something, and that mattered. Maybe her parents would cry over what they didn’t know and what they did, which was that they were together. Maybe Ruth would empty the dishwasher and G. H. would take out the garbage, and maybe the day would truly begin, and if the rest of it—something for lunch, a relaxing swim, those pool floats, catching up on a magazine, attempting that jigsaw puzzle?—was unclear, so be it. If they didn’t know how it would end—with night, with more terrible noise from the top of Olympus, with bombs, with disease, with blood, with happiness, with deer or something else watching them from the darkened woods—well, wasn’t that true of every day?
Acknowledgments
I’m deeply indebted to this book’s editors—Helen Atsma, Sara Birmingham, and Megan Lynch—as well as to all their colleagues at Ecco, and, as always, to Julie Barer and Nicole Cunningham. I am very thankful for the generosity of Laura Lippman, Dan Chaon, Jessica Winter, Meaghan O’Connell, and Lynn Steger Strong. It is not an exaggeration to say this book would not exist without David Land; David, I hope for many more years of vacations (crumb-topped doughnuts, swimming pools, cake from a box on rainy days) with you.
About the Author
RUMAAN ALAM is the author of the novels Rich and Pretty and That Kind of Mother. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, the New Republic, New York magazine, the Wall Street Journal, Bookforum, the New Yorker, and elsewhere. He studied at Oberlin College and lives in Brooklyn, New York.
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Also by Rumaan Alam
That Kind of Mother
Rich and Pretty
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
“Angela”
Written by Bill Callahan
Published by Rough Trade Publishing
By arrangement with Bank Robber Music
LEAVE THE WORLD BEHIND. Copyright © 2020 by Rumaan Alam. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Cover design by Sara Wood
Cover art: Night Swimming (2019) © Jessica Brilli
Title page illustration by Proskurina Yuliya/Shutterstock, Inc.
Ecco® and HarperCollins® are trademarks of HarperCollins Publishers.
FIRST EDITION
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Alam, Rumaan, author.
Title: Leave the world behind : a novel / Rumaan Alam.
Description: First Edition. | New York, NY : Ecco, [2020] | Identifiers: LCCN 2020013947 (print) | LCCN 2020013948 (ebook) | ISBN 9780062667632 (hardback) | ISBN 9780062667656 (ebook)
Classification: LCC PS3601.L3257 L43 2020 (print) | LCC PS3601.L3257 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23
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Digital Edition OCTOBER 2020 ISBN: 978-0-06-266765-6
Version 09012020
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-266763-2
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